During an earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the company’s robotaxi initiative as expanding into new cities and accumulating greater operational mileage. However, Musk’s typical optimism appeared tempered, particularly regarding safety assurances. The company’s stated metrics conflicted with observable performance indicators, raising questions about the program’s trajectory.
Tesla’s head of AI reported that unsupervised robotaxis had driven 380,000 miles across six cities in two states, with weekly mileage increasing at a 10 percent rate. Ashok Elluswamy highlighted Tesla’s camera-only approach as superior to competitors’ use of lidar and radar sensors. However, these figures pale in comparison to rival Waymo’s approximately four million weekly miles. An equity research analyst characterized the performance as an alarming decline, signaling growing investor concern.
The company’s unsupervised fleet remains limited, with approximately 16 vehicles in Austin, four in Dallas, and one in Houston according to crowdsourced tracking data. When questioned about expanding the Austin deployment, Elluswamy cited the need to demonstrate the system’s generalizability across multiple cities rather than concentrating resources in a single location. Regulatory constraints also factor into deployment decisions, with proposed New Jersey legislation potentially requiring multiple sensor types incompatible with Tesla’s camera-centric design.
Safety remains a significant variable in the program’s viability. Tesla’s fleet has reportedly been involved in approximately 18 incidents, with independent driver fault accounting for 56 percent. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system faces investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, though the robotaxi fleet operates a newer software version than consumer vehicles. The company’s tendency to redact incident details from public records limits external assessment of safety performance.
Tesla continues positioning its robotaxi initiative as progressing successfully while confronting data suggesting operational constraints and market challenges that conflict with expansion narratives.
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